MENA region pay-TV broadcaster OSN is boosting the number of HD channels on offer to 46, an increase of two, and now including all of the operator’s movie channels.

CEO David Butorac talked up the improved offering saying that his subscribers had grown to expect HD, and he promised more premium content would be appearing on the system.

Since January this year OSN has added HD versions of Animal Planet, Discovery Science and Discovery TLC.

However, there’s a growing threat in the region from FTA and ‘near-free’ broadcasters which are embracing HD as part of a lower level subscription rate, or none at all. For example, Dubai’s My-HD pay-TV ‘lite’ operation claims 53 HD channels (out of 74 on offer) and while they might not all quite match OSN in terms of movie quality, there remains plenty on offer in HD from the likes of MBC Group, Rotana Group, Discovery Networks, Al Nahar TV, MTV Lebanon, GMA Networks and others. And a claimed 100,000 subscribers.

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, Pay TV, UHD